So, you received your Payroll Protection Program funds. Now What? Do you want the loan forgiven? If that’s your goal, it’s time to get your “Accounting” on. The loan forgiveness process will be administered by your bank, and we expect they will request supporting documentation to prove your case of loan forgiveness.

First, what is an acceptable use of the funds? Payroll costs, health care benefits, mortgage interest payments, rent, utility, interest payments, depending on your legal entity. In addition, you must use at least 75% of the proceeds on payroll costs.

Another important element is that you actually spend the funds in the covered period, which is defined as the 8-week period immediately after your receipt of the loan proceeds.

In order to document easier, our recommendation is to create a separate bank account to deposit the loan proceeds into. This way you have a head start on the accounting, and it might make it easier to document. You may also want to set up sub-accounts to assist in the tracking of eligible payments, or perhaps a Project or Job to assist in tracking.

Bottom line: document, document, document! Also, start projecting your payments now so you are not caught with an issue in week 8 when it is too late.

There are many tips, tricks or tweaks that we can do to assist if you need any help. Please call us for a consultation.

Isn’t it time you took your business to the next level? Join us in Las Vegas January 26 – January 31 for Acumatica Summit 2020! Grow relationships, learn from the experts, and connect your business all while enjoying our spectacular venue, The Cosmopolitan, a luxury resort in the heart of the Las Vegas strip.

From information-packed Keynotes to inspiring speakers, and from an extensive Solution Showcase to educational training tracks, Acumatica Summit 2020 will provide the latest and greatest in technology and expertise in the cloud ERP space. And, it’s a lot of fun.

“Every year I look forward to the Summit as a time to learn new things.”
—Randy Forkner, President of Collins Computing, Inc.

The Acumatica Hackathon welcomes developers and non-developers (partners, customers, Acumatica employees, etc). Acumatica is a company committed to working with and investing in their developer community. The Acumatica Cloud xRP Platform, with its open and flexible architecture, gives developers the freedom to customize it as they desire. They don’t believe in one-size-fits-all.

The first step is registering for Acumatica Summit 2020, coming January 26-31, 2020, in Las Vegas, Nevada at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The Acumatica Hackathon itself starts on Saturday, January 25 at 2 pm. The second step is understanding why Acumatica feels so strongly about developers participating in the Hackathon. Read more about that here.

The Internal Revenue Service has made substantial changes to the tax code that will impact the 2020 payroll tax year. The IRS has released a new W-4 form as a result of these changes. For more detailed information please see the IRS FAQs regarding the new W-4 form.

As you prepare for the next payroll tax year be aware of some important changes:

Any new employee starting January 1, 2020 or later must use the new W-4 Employee Withholding Certificate form.

Effective January 1, 2020 any employee that needs to make changes to their withholdings must use the new W-4 Employee Withholding Certificate form.

There are two kinds of cloud ERP vendors; closed – where the vendors intentionally close their APIs, usually those in vertical apps, believing it gives them a lock in their market and open – vendors that provide open interfaces to ensure seamless cloud-to-cloud integrations. Acumatica falls within the open category. They support an open world and eliminating the separations of automation. To quote Acumatica’s Ajoy Krishnamoorthy, VP of Platform Strategy, “We don’t think that data should live and die within the boundaries of ERP.” He says this in his post, The Connected Cloud: How Acumatica’s API Supports a Multicloud World, which he wrote in 2017. In it, he explains how their flexible, customizable cloud xRP platform was developed. He also details Acumatica’s API journey. Acumatica believes that “APIs form the connecting glue between modern applications. Nearly every application uses APIs to connect with corporate data sources, third party data services or other applications. Creating an open description format for API services that is vendor neutral, portable, and open is critical to accelerating the vision of a truly connected world.” Read more here.

The Illinois Department Of Employment Security (IDES) will be mailing the 2020 Rate Determination on or about December 1, 2019. It is important that each Employer verifies the rate as assigned with the 15 day protest time limit.

The Employer can also go to their account with IDES at mytax.illinois.gov and get the Rate Determination from that portal.

Errors to look for on the Rate Determination:

Most of the errors will be found when reviewing the BEN 118, Statement of Benefits Charges, for the period listed on the Rate Determination.

Benefits paid to an Employee when the Employee was denied benefits.

Benefits charged to the Employer when the Employer is not the chargeable employer.

Benefits charged to the Employer when the benefit charges are to be a pooled cost.

Benefits paid for more than 26 weeks or benefits equal more than 26 times the weekly benefit amount.

Benefits were allowed at one level of protest and then denied on appeal and the credit was not applied.

No claim was received on the Individual listed on the BEN 118, Statement of Benefit Charges.

No response to the protest of the BEN 118, Statement of Benefit Charges.

No BEN 118, Statement of Benefit Charges was received for a quarter where benefit charges are listed.

Effective July 1st, manufacturers in Illinois no longer have to pay sales tax on most of the supplies and consumables used in a manufacturing facility. The Department of Revenue published Informational Bulletin FY 2019-28 which covers the general rules prior to their updating the appropriate regulation.

The law recites the following as production related tangible personal property that is used or consumed in a manufacturing process: property that is purchased for incorporation into real property within a manufacturing facility, supplies and consumables used in a manufacturing facility including fuels, coolants, solvents, oils, lubricants, and adhesives, hand tools, protective apparel, and fire and safety equipment.

This addition to the law is in the same statute granting sales tax exemption for machinery and equipment used in manufacturing. While it appears to read that these new items would also be exempt if used in the production of graphic arts, clarification will have to be provided by the Department of Revenue.

IDOR form ST-587 is the exemption certificate that the manufacturer should provide to its vendor in order to document the exemption. Since this form is not yet set up to permit a “blanket” exemption for all future purchases, the manufacturer is required to provide the form for each purchase order.

I goods were delivered after June 30th, you should contact your vendor, provide a ST-587 and ask for a refund of sales tax paid (or short pay open invoices).

Unfortunately, scammers to do not take off for the holiday season. In fact, it appears the scams increase! Last week a scam surfaced around the country. A number of bomb scares were reported requesting a bit coin payment. Since none of the “bomb” were detonated, this appears to have been just a scam.

Bomb scares are not the only scams during the season. Just in the last few days I received a phone call from someone that reported they were receiving information about my business computer having problems. I was too busy to play with them, so I did the right thing and just hung up. Other companies that you have no relationship with are not getting information about your computer.

Also, with tax season being just around the corner, the IRS does not notify you of any tax problems with a phone call. They ALWAYS send a letter in the US mail.

The only institutions that may call, email or text you are your bank and credit card companies. Normally you will only receive these notifications if you sign up for them. Just to be extra cautious, do not reply to the notification, but call your bank or credit card company via the number on your statement or their website. If it is a legitimate concern, they will forward you to the correct person to resolve your issue.

Again, if you get an unsolicited phone call about any computer issues, just hang up. The same goes for tax issues. If you get a strange pop up on your computer, shut it down immediately. If it will not let up shut down your computer, unplug it! and contact your IT department or a computer professional.

Unfortunately, the holiday season is a busy time for scammers. Don’t let the business of the season allow you to let down your guard. Happy Holidays and be careful!

Most software companies will support old versions of their software for a limited amount of time. Sage, our main vendor, only supports two prior versions of their software for Sage 300. A new version of Sage 300 comes out just about every year. This is not uncommon as most software vendors have a similar policy. Therefore, when Sage releases the 2019 version they will soon thereafter discontinue support for the 2016 version. Old unsupported versions will most likely still work fine in the short term, but they come with a risk.

Recently one of our clients was hit by a virus. Fortunately they have good backups and were able to mitigate the damage. They decided to update their server and all of their workstations. Support for their accounting software had stopped a few years back due to changes by Microsoft. When they installed all the new hardware they encountered a number of issues with the old software. They now are facing an unplanned upgrade. They were perfectly happy with the old software, but there is always the risk that it will not run properly with new hardware.

Now we do not recommend that you always have to upgrade to the latest version and we continue to support old software even when it no longer supported by the vendor, but we are limited in what we can do. Technology changes quickly and we do not want to hold a company back from using newer, faster and easier computer equipment and software, because they have an old accounting or ERP system. If you are currently using unsupported software we recommend replacing it as soon as possible. Definitely within the next year or two.

What you will find out when purchasing a new system is that many software companies are moving to a selling on a subscription basis. This will significantly reduce the first year cost of the software, but future years many have a larger cost. This is the way that Sage now sells most of its products and it is the way they sell Sage 300. Interestingly, the future yearly subscription price is about the same as the old annual maintenance fee. There is an activation fee in the first year and of course the cost of setting up the software, moving data and training users. We have not found a client that would pay more under the new pricing plan than if they were to purchase the software under the old method and keep paying for their annual maintenance.

The moral of the story is you can either plan to upgrade your software or wait for a disaster and be forced to upgrade. We prefer working planned updates. It is less stressful for you and easier too!